Rantology

A cousin of Dwyane Wade was shot and killed Friday afternoon in Chicago while pushing her baby in a stroller.

Nykea Aldridge, 32, was a mother of four who had gone to register her older children for elementary school when she was shot in the head and arm around 3:30 p.m., according to Chicago’s ABC 7.

Aldridge was in the Parkway Gardens neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side, caught in the crossfire of an altercation she was not involved with, police reports said.

“The entire Chicago Bulls organization is deeply saddened by the news of Dwyane Wade’s cousin, Nykea Aldridge,” the team said in a statement released Friday night. “We send our deepest condolences to the entire Wade family during this difficult time.”

…Donald Trump won’t exploit.

At a rally on Wednesday, Trump said, “Hillary Clinton is a bigot who sees people of color only as votes, not as human beings worthy of a better future.”

Donald Trump is a sickening, vile, repugnant, repulsive, racist asshole and if you support a sickening, vile, repugnant, repulsive racist asshole, what does that say about you?

What it says to me is the only difference between you and Trump is you ain’t rich.

Like this:

Donald Trump wants the Black vote. Okay, that’s not true. He doesn’t want the Black vote, but he has to say he wants the Black vote despite doing nothing to get it.
“What do you have to lose? You’re living in poverty. Your schools are no good. You have no jobs. Fifty-eight percent of your youth is unemployed. What the hell do you have to lose? I will produce. I will produce the inner cities and I will produce for the African Americans. And the Democrats will not produce. All they’ve done is taken advantage of your vote. … If you keep voting for the same people, you’ll get exactly the same result.”

This is like a bear telling you its better if you let him eat you instead of being devoured by piranhas because it’ll go quicker. Trump next made a bold prediction what happens if he wins and runs for reelection in 2020.

“I guarantee you that I will get over 95 percent of the African-American vote. I promise you. Because I will produce.”

Secondly, Donald Trump is not going to Black voters seeking their support. His “what the hell have you got to lose?” remarks were made in Dimondale, Michigan, a city that is less than 1 percent Black. Trump has declined invitations to speak to the NAACP convention in Cincinnati and the joint convention of the National Association of Black Journalists and National Association of Hispanic Journalists in Washington.

Having a great relationship with The Blacks.(Photo by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic)

Trump didn’t even send his national director of African-America outreach, Omarosa Manigault to pinch hit for him. Actually there is no African-American outreach by Trump and there never was. It’s an outreach to White Americans in hopes of convincing them they aren’t voting for an insane racist (hint: they are) .

This is obvious to Michael Steele, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, who told The Wall Street Journal he has passed along requests from historically black colleges for Mr. Trump to speak….“You don’t go to a white community to talk about black folks. Hello, it doesn’t make sense.”

Actually, it makes a lot of sense if the audience you’re trying to reach with your open invitation isn’t the one you’re really interested in.

Trump needs to do something, and nonwhite voters are already too far gone for the real estate mogul to make up lost ground. (Trump is on pace to lose black voters by the largest margin in modern American history, surpassing even Barry Goldwater’s catastrophic performance in the 1964 presidential election.) Enter Kellyanne Conway, part of the latest round of political operatives to hitch their fate to Trump’s aspirations. Last week, Conway—who backed Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in the Republican primaries—supplanted Paul Manafort as manager for the Trump campaign. And in short order, she has worked to tame the worst of Trump’s behavior.

The goal is straightforward: If Trump seems more normal and less erratic, then he could begin to win those white college-educated voters who are critical to victory in states like Colorado, Florida, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. For Team Trump, it’s a simple equation. If those voters are turned off by his racist rhetoric, then he could address their fears by loudly reaching out to black voters. It’s an old strategy, meant to assure a critical set of Republican-leaning voters that they aren’t backing a bigot.

Conway herself gave away the game in a Sunday interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. “I live in a white community. I’m white. I was very moved by his comment,” said Conway, when asked about the all-white venue for Trump’s comments and the extent to which they sustain the idea that most black Americans live in poverty. Likewise, on Monday, Republican National Committee spokesperson Sean Spicer pointed to Trump’s belated adherence to anti-discrimination laws as evidence of black outreach, something that wouldn’t win a single black voter to Trump’s side, but might assuage some white ones.

The Great White Father of the unwashed Black masses is continuing his soul serenade as he speaks to overwhelmingly White audiences about the Negro Problem.

“Poverty. Rejection. Horrible education. No housing. No homes. No ownership. Crime at levels nobody has seen. You can go to war zones in countries that we’re fighting and it’s safer than living in some of our inner cities. They’re run by the Democrats.”

“Look, it is a disaster the way African Americans are living. We’ll get rid of the crime. You’ll be able to walk down the street without getting shot. Right now, you walk down the street, you get shot.”

He’s absolutely right. When I took the trash out, I had to duck and cover to avoid a couple of drug dealers shooting it out in the alley and on my way to work, I sped past a drive-by and a gang rape.

Trump paints a dire picture of what life is like for Black people, and he’s showing off his Art of the Unreal to enthusiastic audiences of Whites who eat up all this doom and gloom of violence, dysfunction, addition, poverty, unemployment and rampant crime. That’s not how most Black people live, but when the only Black folks you know are Omarosa, that’s the way Trump sees how they live.

“Donald Trump is a bigot, there’s no other way to get around it. Anybody who accepts that, supports it. Anybody supports it is promoting it and that makes you a part of the bigotry itself. You have to decide whether or not you want to be part of the bigotry that is Donald Trump. You have to decide whether you want to be part of the sexism and misogyny that is Donald Trump.”

And there you have it. Donald Trump isn’t appealing to Black voters. He doesn’t even talk to them and he knows he’s not getting their votes. When they aren’t being constantly shot at, Black voters know Trump’s history and they aren’t going to be suckered in by his sweet words that Daddy will make it all right.

Trump’s latest “pivot” (or is it “flailing?”), that all Black Americans are living in a dystopian war zone only HE can save them from is an insult to every sentient, conscious Black American and should be considered an insult by every sentient, conscious White American.

Trump is treading a familiar road. It’s a road where all the criminals are Black like George H.W. Bush’s Willie Horton and everyone on welfare and food stamps are Black like Ronald Reagan’s “welfare queens” and Blacks are a problem to be solved instead of citizens to be involved.

Playing upon stereotypes and racial fear and resentment is an old tactic, but a very successful one. Lee Atwater would smile with pride.

Like this:

Since he entered the race, Trump has insulted, mocked and picked fights with every Republican candidate and nearly every Democratic candidate, the wives of several candidates, the Pope, a reporter with a disability, Mexicans, immigrants, Muslims, pregnant women, the U.S. military, Europe, African-Americans, the media, and pretty much anybody who crossed him in any way, shape or form.

Going after Khizr and Ghazala Khan feels like a different sort of fight. This feels like a fight Trump can lose and lose badly. Taking on a Gold Star mother and father who are Muslim Americans that lost their son in defense of this country by a rich man’s brat who ducked military service and none of his brats have served either is a cowardly move. But that’s what Trump is: a coward. A gutless, craven, unprincipled, coward.

Every little insult prompts Trump to respond even when he shouldn’t and the Trump vs. The Khans fight is the one he shouldn’t have taken on as Trump is taking fire from both enemies and allies. Trump would sooner pull off that dyed dead raccoon off his head than ever apologize and as long as he can wave it away as refusing to bow to “political correctness” he won’t. If and When his supporters who seemingly are impervious to being offended by anything Trump says, finally find something even they are troubled by he will have to.

If Trump has no decency in him his supporters will have to find their own.

Picking a fight with Gold Star parents is dumb but Donald Trump is a big dummy.

Khizr Khan On NPR’s All Things Considered “I will do it [a] million times, I will do it louder, I will do it forcefully,” Khan told Kelly McEvers, host of NPR’s All Things Considered. “I’ll do it [a] hundred million times — now is the time for the rest of the world to see the true America, the decent America, the good America.”

But let’s not get carried away,yet. Trump had a bad week and he brought it all on himself, but it doesn’t mean he won’t have any good weeks. Even now, Clinton is still sticking her foot in her mouth over her damn emails saying FBI director James Comey cleared her of any wrongdoing when he did no such thing. Now there are hints, allegations and things unsaid the Clinton Foundation and the State Department were enjoying a cozy relationship.

It was truly a blessing for Clinton she drew the Trump Card as her opponent. With her low likability and even lower credibility with many voters, she might well be losing to Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, or even Ted Cruz. They would make mistakes too, but not like Trump’s mistakes.

Everything about Trump screams of terminal testosterone poisoning (we should be so lucky). That, or he has a microscopic penis. His desperate need to prove how tough he is and how he’d be merciless and pitiless to terrorists, suspected terrorists, families of terrorists, and anybody who says anything mean about Donald Trump screams of overcompensation.

I regret my amusement of last year. I should have been more suspicious of the capacity of the American people to discern genuine and authentic conservatism from swaggering macho posturing. Regrettably, I overestimated my fellow citizens who have been suckered into believing a con man who consciously and consistently avoided military service, denigrates Gold Star families, former P.O.W’s, and our current active duty soldiers, and fantasizes about dropping nukes on enemies, somehow projects “strength” and a bold America that can stare down anybody and make them take a backward step.

I fully expect should he show up for their first debate, at some point Trump will unzip his fly, pull out The Trump Tower, and sneer at Hillary Clinton, “Mine’s bigger than yours.” The mouth-breathers will love it.

There is no low too low for Donald Trump and he proved it yet again.

That was bad. Really bad. But Trump being Trump means there’s no bottom. What’s smearing a grieving mother and father mean when you can suggest someone might shoot Hillary Clinton if she’s elected?

“If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks,. Although the Second Amendment people — maybe there is, I don’t know.”

Congratulations, Donald. You just made yourself responsible if anything happens to Hillary Clinton for the rest of this election.

Beating Trump was always Job One this election season. Getting Clinton elected and making Mitch McConnell the minority leader again was always of paramount importance, but not to the degree of keeping Trump out of the White House and away from the vast powers of the presidency was.

Now it’s not enough to beat Trump. Now he needs to be crushed. Squashed like a scuttling cockroach across the kitchen floor. Mashed into bits of viscera and bone, never to rise again and contaminate the American body politic with his disgustingly boorish coarseness and gross vulgarity again.

Beating Trump is no longer good enough. Defeating him is not enough. He must be humiliated and his failure must be massive, epic in scope and complete in its awful destructiveness.

“I’ll just keep doing the same thing I’m doing right now,” Trump told CNBC. “And at the end, it’s either going to work, or I’m going to, you know, I’m going to have a very, very nice, long vacation.”

Let’s send Donald on vacation. A real, LONG vacation.

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I didn’t watch the first night of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland and I don’t plan on watching any other nights either. I did hear something about Melania Trump, Donald’s mail order bride engaging in an absurd act of plagiarism and from Michelle Obama’s 2008 speech to the Democratic National Convention, no less.

Mrs. Trump, Monday night:
“From a young age, my parents impressed on me the values that you work hard for what you want in life, that your word is your bond and you do what you say and keep your promise, that you treat people with respect. They taught and showed me values and morals in their daily lives. That is a lesson that I continue to pass along to our son. And we need to pass those lessons on to the many generations to follow. Because we want our children in this nation to know that the only limit to your achievements is the strength of your dreams and your willingness to work for them.”

Mrs. Obama, in her 2008 speech:
“Barack and I were raised with so many of the same values: that you work hard for what you want in life; that your word is your bond and you do what you say you’re going to do; that you treat people with dignity and respect, even if you don’t know them, and even if you don’t agree with them. And Barack and I set out to build lives guided by these values, and pass them onto the next generation. Because we want our children — and all children in this nation — to know that the only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work for them.

Mrs. Trump:
“I was born in Slovenia, a small, beautiful and then-communist country in Central Europe. My sister, Ines, who is an incredible woman and a friend, and I were raised by my wonderful parents. My elegant and hardworking mother, Amalija, introduced me to fashion and beauty. My father, Viktor, instilled in me a passion for business and travel. Their integrity, compassion and intelligence reflects to this day on me and for my love of family and America.”

Mrs. Obama in 2008:
“And I come here as a daughter — raised on the South Side of Chicago by a father who was a blue-collar city worker and a mother who stayed at home with my brother and me. My mother’s love has always been a sustaining force for our family, and one of my greatest joys is seeing her integrity, her compassion and her intelligence reflected in my own daughters.”

What say you, gentle readers? Is Mrs. Trump an innocent conveyor of words coincidentally complied as a previous presidential aspirant’s spouse once did or is she guilty as hell of deliberately and purposefully ripping off Michelle Obama?

Set aside the sadistic schadenfreude of Melania Trump’s face-plant before a national audience, it can be reasonably argued her shitty speech was no better or worse than all the other shitty speeches I ignored in Day #1 of the Republican National We Hate Barry and Hillary Convention. However, not being important is not the same as not mattering.

When your best argument against the other candidate is they are dishonest and crooked and gets away with lying and then you lift entire sections from a speech made in public eight years ago, that goes past arrogance and headlong into stupid. Every word Melania Trump uttered was going to be recorded, fact-checked and stress tested. How long did campaign manager Paul Manifort think it would take before somebody stirred in their chair and said, “Say…that sure sounds familiar…?”

For nobody on Team Trump to have caught this isn’t incompetence. It’s knowing their base won’t give a fuck.

This is how the Trump “campaign” does it. They lie and they lie loud and long and when they’re caught in the lie, they deny they lied in the first place, but if they did, it’s Clinton’s fault! Only groupies. blind partisans, and idiots let Trump get away with this shit and don’t believe the truth matters when they’re being lied to right in their face. David Frum lists ten reasons why Melania’s howler feeds into the narrative that the Trump “campaign” is like Indiana Jones making it up as they go along.

1) Melania Trump’s speech was the first and best opportunity to humanize Donald Trump. That opportunity was not only wasted, but the whole project of humanizing Trump has become a farce that will haunt the later attempts by Trump’s children to undo Monday night’s debacle.

Trump Family Values

3) Since Sunday, every journalist at this convention has been collecting examples of the Trump campaign’s failures and incompetence: the quarrel with Ohio Governor John Kasich, the absent senators and governors, the no-show donors, the convention’s financial embarrassments, the floor fight over rules, the lack of a proper schedule, and the defective apps and other technology. Suddenly, there is one easy-to-understand incident that encapsulates in one grim joke all this convention’s cavalcade of derp.

5) Trump has just vividly demonstrated that his campaign—never mind the campaign, he himself—have zero skill at crisis management. Confronted with this comically absurd failure, their instinct is not only to lie, shift blame, and refuse responsibility, but to do so in laughably unbelievable ways. It’s all a big joke when the crisis in question is a plagiarized speech by a would-be first lady. It won’t be so funny when a President Trump tries to manage a truly life-and-death crisis in the same blundering, dopey, and cowardly way.
9) Plagiarism draws attention to content of the passage plagiarized. In 2008, Michelle Obama summed up the values that she had learned from her parents and that she and Barack Obama now tried to instill in their children: work hard; tell the truth; keep your promises; treat others with dignity and respect. Donald Trump epically does not tell the truth, does not keep his promises, and does not treat others with dignity and respect. A plagiarized speech (and the failure to detect the plagiarism) pretty strongly confirms that the Trumps do not much care about hard work, either. “Thine own mouth condemneth thee, and not I: yea, thine own lips testify against thee.”

PlagiarismMATTERS. Or at least it should, unless we accept when we’re talking Trump, the rules do not apply. I do not accept. The first night of the Republican convention is a bit early for a Clint Eastwood’s Chair moment but whoomp there it is.

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Remember when John McCain was the Reasonable Republican leader? If you do, you’re showing your age. That Johnny Mac is long gone. This is who he is now. A grumpy 79-year-old man who having got punked by Donald Trump. In 2008, McCain screwed his presidential chances by selecting Sarah Palin. Now he sounds like Sarah Palin.

“Barack Obama is directly responsible for it, because when he pulled everybody out of Iraq, al-Qaida went to Syria, became ISIS, and ISIS is what it is today thanks to Barack Obama’s failures, utter failures, by pulling everybody out of Iraq. “So the responsibility for it lies with President Barack Obama and his failed policies.”
~ Sen. John McCain, 06/17/16

What in the entire fuck is wrong with McCain? Is this just a Republican senator taking on a Democratic politics in the usual “I don’t like this guy since he beat my ass eight years ago and took the job I deserved, so I’m gonna hate on him and blame him for the worst mass murder in recent history.”

Politics are involved, all right. The politics of “I’m in a tough reelection fight and I can’t afford to piss off Donald Trump voters so even though he totally disrespected me, I’m gonna out-Trump Trump.”

McCain is in a harder primary fight than he expected, and even if he wins it he faces a strong Democratic challenger in the fall. He’s trying to save his ass and to do so he’s joined the lunatic fringe. If Trump had said the same damn thing everyone would shrug it off as the latest word vomit spewed from his rancid piehole. We’ve come to expect The Donald’s special disdain of truth and facts.

But this is Johnny Mac. Big-time war hero. P.O.W. Soldier. American hero. For him to shit out this garbage doesn’t lessen Barack Obama, but it does diminish McCain. It makes him small and it makes him look weak and like an old pol who’s hung on too fucking long, and right about now, those are things he can’t afford to be.

“I misspoke” is bullshit. Weak-ass BULLSHIT. It was bullshit as an excuse as Trump saying he was “misconstrued” in his bigoted attacks on Judge Curiel and it’s bullshit when a U.S. Senator accuses the President for being personally culpable for the deaths of 49 people. It’s worse when McCain does it, because when his mouth disengages from his brain, people actually listen and many of us can’t believe what we’re hearing from him.

Let’s apply John McCain’s twisted logic to his favorite person: John McCain. As a fighter pilot during the Viet Nam war, McCain was a pilot and part of the Operation: Rolling Thunder bombing campaign of North Vietnam. Estimates of civilians killed in the bombing vary between 52,00 and 182,000 killed, and critics of the war say villages and hospitals were targeted. McCain was personally involved in 23 combat missions.

A small man continuing to grow smaller.

Applying the senator’s reasoning to himself, instead of running for reelection as a war hero shouldn’t he be prosecuted as a war criminal instead?

Ludicrous? Absurd? Ridiculous? Sure, but so is Johnny Mac as he bows down to Trumpism, the philosophy of the guy who said about McCain, “I like people who weren’t captured.”

I like people who don’t run scared and talk out their ass.

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In his quest to become America’s next and quite possibly LAST president, Donald J. Trump locked up the Republican presidential nomination next week. Now the only thing between him and victory is a little loved career politician plagued by hints of scandal and too much ethical flexibility. It’s time to start thinking the unthinkable. Donald Trump could be president.

I can see the idea is starting to take hold among some that as he pivots to the general election Trump is going to moderate his message and become “more Presidential.” Which is horseshit because Trump doesn’t DO moderation. Trump doesn’t know how to be “more Presidential.” Why anyone would expect a reality show host to become a statesman?

America can’t afford that sort of dangerous naiveté. Americans can’t be sanguine that the risks associated with electing an autocratic despot will to lead to peace and prosperity.

Now is not the type for this sort of magical thinking. If you want to call that “thinking” at all.

Weak people long for a strongman to tell them HE has the answers and HE will make what is wrong, right and HE has a plan and only HE has the vision for HE is strong and he will lead the weak.

For those that do not wish to lead nor follow, Donald Trump has nothing to offer. I have far more respect for the Republicans who refuse to get in bed with Trump and assume the position than I do for those who opposed him yesterday and now spread their legs for him today.

Trump is the wolf in the fold and he will take vengeance against those whom stood against him. He does not forgive and he will not forget. Give this man the full force of the Justice Department, the IRS, the CIA, FBI, NSA, and the U.S. military and who will stop him? Who will be there to tell him “No, Mr. President. You can’t do that?”

The final decision rests with the president, but its vital the president has aides, advisers, and others who can tell him or her not what they can do with their immense power, but what they cannot. Who will tell President Trump anything other than, “That’s a great idea, Mr. President!”

It’s possible there is a reasonable, intelligent, well-articulated argument for Trump, but nobody’s made it to me.

The graffiti vote has spoken.

The unreasonable, stupid, and barely articulate arguments for Trump I’m quite familiar with. They don’t have much more depth than “He’ll make America great again” and that’s nothing more than a bumper sticker slogan. If all you’re looking for is a shit-stirrer who will divide the country worse than it already is, widen the gap between the haves and have-nots worse than it already is, sour racial relations worse than they already are, make the world an even more dangerous place than it already is, and take the country into a darker direction than its ever been, then you should absolutely take the plunge and vote for Trump.

Surrendering to a temptation can be fun. It’s also fun to piss off annoying people. It’s no fun for those who suffer the consequences of indulging a temptation that unleashes terrible consequences. Trump doesn’t have to become an American Führer to be a dictator or start WWIII. All he has to do is get elected and start trampling over the rights of millions and treating the Constitution as a list of suggestions instead of guiding principles.

Donald Trump is very scary if you’re on his Shit List and a lot of Americans already are and don’t know it. Some of them are laughing their ass off now and will be crying in their beer later. Some will play along with Trump and wave away his most outlandish remarks as nothing more than campaign rhetoric and over-the-top hyperbole designed to play to the crowd, not become national policy. Just like everybody else who predicted Trumpmania would pass was proven wrong, they’ll be wrong again, but this time it’ll be too late when the president-elect raises his right hand and takes an oath he neither believes in nor will adhere to.

There’s always a possibility Trump’s talk of rounding up and deporting millions and banning Muslims is just that–talk. A little something for the nativists, xenophobes, and other bigots to smile about, but nothing more than another vague promise abandoned by a candidate as soon as the suckers vote them into elected office.

OR…

Trump means it. He’s not kidding. He’s going to build a wall and he’s going to make Mexico cough up the cash to pay for it. It wasn’t just polarizing campaign rhetoric. It was a real thing and once he’s got the power to do it, he’s gonna DO it.

Now I’d suppose some of the Undesirables would go out like the Japanese did during WWII when they were the Undesireables to be rounded up and placed in internment camps. For the most part, they went quietly. They didn’t necessarily like it, but they weren’t being kicked out of the U.S. either.

This time around when the police or the National Guard or the Army come a’knockin’ on Granny’s door to pack her away on a bus, Granny’s sons and daughters, nephews and nieces and friends will be ready and spoiling for a fight, and that’s when it will get bloody.

I’ ve heard some voters will vote for Trump because we’ve had enough of politicians and need someone in the Oval Office who isn’t one. That, or this Is what Americans deserve for not supporting Bernie Sanders. Then there are a few who think it’s a good gag to vote for Trump.

I really don’t care about the sort of deranged thinking it requires to believe the best alternative if you can’t have Sanders is to vote for Trump, the guy he’s ultimately trying to square off against. Maybe that makes sense in the La-La Land of Susan Sarandon’s headspace but it make no sense in mine.

Some people find hilarity in the looming prospect of tragedy. Some people inhabit a world of privilege and believe they can float above it all. Some people are so thoughtless, selfish and a bit stupid that they just don’t care. It’s all one big fucking joke to them as long as somebody else is the butt of the joke.

It’s fun to laugh at those who cry “wolf” as worry warts panicking over a threat that hasn’t happened. At least its fun until you realize to your sorrow the wolf is not at the door. The wolf is inside the house and it is a hungry wolf.
The naysayers can keep proclaiming, “…all is well. All is well” and pooh-poohing the threat posed by Trump’s ascendancy as nothing new and just a slightly more colorful version of business as usual.

Some of us are a bit less flippant, a bit more contemplative and a lot less dismissive of the threat posed by a Trump presidency and we know better. The rest will have to learn on their own, if indeed they ever do.

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There’s one rule to remember when playing the game of presidential politics and it’s this: Don’t play the game if you only want to win. I’ve come around to the sad conclusion many of Bernie Sanders supporters have forgotten this rule or they never knew the rule which is worse.

Maybe I’d have to get a time machine and travel back to 2008, but dammit, I don’t remember this sort of dogmatic questioning of one’s political allegiances, intelligence and good sense by Barack Obama supporters of Hillary Clinton supporters. Maybe it was this bad. It sure seems worse.

I’m no Bernie Bro, but I like a lot of what he represents and repeatedly said if he’s the Democratic nominee he has my vote. On the flip side, I wanna know is will the Sanders supporters make the same commitment if their guy doesn’t get the nomination as it presently appears he will not? I kept asking and could not get a straight answer to that question. So I kept asking until finally a Sanders gave me a straight answer.

No, I will never, ever vote for someone I don’t like or trust. To me, Hillary is what the perfect Republican should be and used to be. Bernie is what a Democrat used to be and still should be.

I will not vote for Hillary.

Trump would be no worse than Hillary as president? So Hillary would deport 11 million people. And Hillary would bring back waterboarding and worse. And Hillary would tear up the nuclear deal with Iran. And Hillary would build a fucking wall between the U.S. and Mexico and make Mexico pay for it. And Hillary would repeal Obamacare. And Hillary’s tax cut would go to the top one percent. And Hillary would punish women who have abortions.

I don’t know what to say to Sarandon who says its better to lose with Trump than win with Clinton. “Grow up and don’t play the game of politics if you only want to win and you’re a horrible sore loser,” comes to mind. That, or simply wave “bye-bye” as she drives over the cliff in November in an reenactment of the end of Thelma and Louise.

Not helping, Susan.

The mind-boggling stupidity of Sarandon’s “Bernie or Bust” philosophy is the hissy-fit whining of a privileged White woman who’s just been told by the waiter they’re all out of designer water and have to settle for what comes out of the tap. Sarandon’s wealth and status will insulate her from the selfish consequences of voting for Trump far better than a crew of illegal Mexican workers mowing her lawn in Hollywood.

How does someone call yourself a progressive and purposefully share the same wet dream as of Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and Donald Trump? These are some of the most juvenile acts of thumb-sucking I’ve ever seen from a losing campaign’s supporters.

Anyone who says there’s not much difference between Clinton and Trump either has no grasp of the issues at all or is so blinded by Clinton Derangement Syndrome, they can’t see the difference.

Mathematically, its all over but the shouting for Sanders. Clinton’s lead in the delegate count isn’t insurmountable, but whatever the closet thing to insurmountable is, it’s that. This is not what Sanders voters want to hear, but it would be cruel to tell them this race is still winnable. It’s not.

You have to take two things under consideration. First, it’s hard for a lifelong outsider to beat a political insider for a party’s nomination. Sanders was never going to nudge Clinton aside with the superdelegates. Big crowds are visually impressive, but they have to be matched by big wins and Sanders hasn’t racked up enough of those to deny Clinton the nomination.

Yeah. We are pretty sick of each other.

Second, if Sanders has done nothing else exposed Clinton’s glaring weakness with the progressive wing of the Democratic Party and prevented her from pivoting to the general election by rushing to the center of the lane. She can’t ignore their disdain for her and thinking they will eventually support her based on Fear of a Trump America, isn’t going to be good enough.

I’m always blown away by how losing candidates think they can demand the winning campaign adopt their issues. If those issues resonated with enough voters the losing candidate would be the winning candidate. Were the positions reversed, Sanders wouldn’t feel any compulsion to offer anything more than an olive branch to Clinton and her backers.

If Sanders wants his “Revolution” to have a lasting impact he has to stay in the Democratic Party and not revert back to his earlier Independent status and support Clinton in denying Donald Trump the White House. A third-party bid or an ugly denouncement of Clinton will only make Sanders a pariah in the party.

Clinton will make all the right noises about inviting Sanders supporters to join her and Bernie will get a nice big prime time address during the Democratic convention to plug his priorities. He’ll press on to California to bring attention to his issues, but few of them will become part of the Democratic platform in Philadelphia.

There are issues upon which the two former colleagues can and should agree on, but anyone expecting Hillary to come out in favor of free college is going to be let down. She is not going to reinvent herself as Sanders Lite. Believe it or not, Clinton has her supporters too and there’s only so much outreach she can do to Sanders and his backers before it begins to look like appeasement.

Every campaign reaches a point when it must recognize it can’t win and must decide what sort of loser it will be. Sanders can play this smart and maximize his support to bring about the political revolution he speaks of, but to do that he has to do in within the Democratic Party. Go outside of it as a third-party candidate and all he will do is wound Clinton, elect Trump and earn the eternal enmity of the party.

Bernie Sanders can be a change agent or he can be a sore loser and pariah like Ralph Nader. He can maximize his new clout into creating an enduring and empowered progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Sanders won’t directly benefit as this was his best shot at the presidency, but if he thinks beyond himself he can turn his energized and engaged voters into something good with candidates and polices that mirror his own. Take over the Democrats and build a legacy than endures beyond one man’s political fortunes.

Sanders could do that. Or he can sulk and pout and put a reactionary Republican in the Oval Office. The question is which course will Sanders supporters let him follow?

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“Here’s your new office, Mr. President. Sen. McConnell picked it out just for you.”

There’s a vacancy on the Supreme Court. It’s President Obama’s job to send up a nominee to the U.S. Senate to fill it. Mitch McConnell and his gang of thugs say, “Hell no, they can’t go!”

The Republicans have made it clear they do not want a moderate, a middle-of-the-roader, a safe choice, or an acceptable alternative. They want Rush Limbaugh or someone further to the Right of him and nothing less than this is acceptable and even that might not be enough. What if Clinton or Sanders wins the presidency? Is McConnell and crew going to say, “Okay, we’ve got a new president. Send over a nominee.”

The Republicans have the House and the Senate and hope to sweep the trifecta with taking the White House back too. Their reasons for keeping Scalia’s seat vacant are twofold: they don’t want to foreclose the possibility of a Republican president picking the next nominee or deny themselves the pleasure of sticking it to Obama one more time.

Why would Obama not make a nomination? The President is a scholar of Constitutional law. He knows what his responsibilities are. McConnell knows what his responsibilities are too, but only one player in this game is trying to change the rules.

If Scalia has died in October or November, McConnell might have a point. There are eight months until Election Day and the Senate Republicans can’t claim they’re too overworked to fit in a confirmation hearing. They just don’t want to allow this president to select the next Supreme Court justice.

“Y’know, you’re even uglier in person, Mitch.” “Thanks, Barack and I just farted.”

That, Mr. and Mrs. America, is obstructionism. No finessing or tap-dancing around it and anyone who thinks GOP opposition to replacing Scalia will magically melt away on January 20, 2017 if President Hillary Clinton or President Bernie Sanders takes the Oath of Office is on crack.

Since Republicans don’t understand the Constitution, what else do they want Obama to punt until the next president arrives? If a shooting war breaks out imperiling American interests, does McConnell want Obama to stand down until a Republican replaces him? If the economy starts to crater, should Obama go golfing and leave the mess for the next guy or gal to clean up?

The president may be in the last year of his presidency, but despite the inability of Republicans to read the Constitution or a calendar, he’s still the only president they got.

McConnell is still trying to undo the results of the 2012 election and this is his last chance to do so. He’s misreading the situation. The GOP has more Senate seats to defend in blue states than do the Democrats. Lose control of the Senate as well as the White House going to Clinton or Sanders, and a nominee further to the Left than what Obama might offer up becomes a near-certainty. Say “good-bye” to overturning Roe v. Wade and say “hello” to the end of Citizens United–especially if Hillary Clinton gets the nod.

The stance taken by the Republicans is historical. We’ve never seen anything like it in American politics. Contentious arguments over Supreme Court nominees is nothing new. Refusing to even consider a nominee no matter how qualified they may be out of malice and spite is. McConnell and his mob really do not seem to grasp we already have a President of the United States and they have NO valid excuse which passes legal, political, or Constitutional muster to deny giving Obama’s nominee a hearing. It’s simply a naked power grab, plain and simple.

I DEMAND you stop the Black guy from replacing me!”

Let’s be honest here: The Republicans don’t want to see their most-favorite Supreme Court justice’s replacement chosen by their least-favorite Chief Executive. This is all about jamming up Barack Obama and denying his legitimacy as the president one more time.

In our hyper-partisan age, it’s no mystery why the Republicans are doing what they are doing. I don’t even really care if they use their numerical superiority in the Senate to vote down Obama’s nominee. That would be fair and every Democrat and/or liberal would have to recognize when you lose an election it has consequences and this is one of them.

But when the Republicans lost the 2008 and 2012 elections that has its consequences too, and one of them it is Barack Obama–not his successor–who has both the duty and Constitutional right to choose a nominee to replace Antonin Scalia and all the rest of this is just noise obscuring the signal

The hatred and disrespect of this president by the Republicans has reached a new low in Obama Derangement Syndrome and it should cost them dearly.